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Russell Tovey is still really upset that so many gays thought ‘Looking’ was boring
Despite starring a pre-'White Lotus' Murray Bartlett, 'Looking' was canceled after two seasons in 2016.
After successfully launching Sex and the City and Girls, HBO hoped to recreate the magic of single friends navigating life and love in the big city with the premiere of Looking in 2014.
While the earlier two shows centered on white heterosexual women in NYC, Looking focused on a slightly more diverse group of gay men in San Francisco. And since a large swath of SATC and Girls’ fanbase was gay men, it would have seemed like Looking was destined to be a huge hit with us boys.
Despite drawing good reviews from critics, the series failed to catch on in the same way as Carrie and co. and was canceled after 18 episodes and 2 seasons, with a wrap-up film released a year later to the delight of hardcore viewers who enjoyed its nuanced and profound storylines. This author included.
You can revisit the Looking boys, Patrick, Augustin, Dom, Richie and Kevin, below:
Perhaps because it didn’t include zingy one-liners or fashionistas sipping cocktails in high-end bars, many gays at the time wrote the series off as being dull and slow.
Now seven years after the show’s final credits rolled, Russell Tovey, who co-starred alongside fellow out actors Jonathan Groff and a pre-White Lotus Murray Bartlett, is revealing he’s still annoyed that the show never got much love from the gays.
“The critical narrative at the beginning was that nothing much happened in it,” Tovey told The Independent. “That it was too boring. But it was just real life!”
To illustrate his irritation, the 41-year-old described how some gay guys were cavalier with their opinions when approaching him while shooting the series on the streets of San Francisco.
“They’d say, ‘You’re in Looking!… but I’ve not watched it, I’ve heard it’s boring’,” he recounted to the outlet. “They hadn’t even seen it! And it’s about you, in your city, filming outside your coffee shop, and you’re not even intrigued to watch it?”
Despite being heartbroken about the lackluster reception, Tovey believes it would fare much better with audiences if it were to be released in the current climate.
“It really, really frustrated me. It broke me, honestly,” he admitted. “If that show came out now, it’d have a completely different response.”
Despite Looking being canceled too soon and not getting the standom it deserved, Tovey is happy that young queer kids have a lot more options of seeing themselves on screen than he did in his youth.
“Look at Heartstopper or Glee. If we had them shows when I was growing up, I would have felt a bit better about myself,” Tovey said.
“I’m so proud of the way the world is now. For young kids to be able to say, ‘Cool, I’ll watch Glee tonight and then go to a gay bar’ – that is an incredible gift that’s been handed down. But we must pay respect and remember where that gift came from.”
Since Looking, Tovey has gone on to other TV shows including roles on Quantico, The Flash, Years and Years, and, most recently, American Horror Story: NYC alongside Zachary Quinto, Charlie Carver, Sandra Bernhard and Patti LuPone.
While you can binge both seasons of Looking on HBO Max, check out a few more photos of Tovey being totally not boring below:
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